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Sopranos' Creator Doubtful of Game Meaning
Stephen Totilo, over at MTV Games, has up an article talking with David Chase, the creator of hit HBO show The Sopranos. Mr. Chase believes firmly in the creative and dramatic potential of television, but isn't so sure that videogames can mean all that much. Despite the new 'Sopranos' game, you'll never see the TV show bleed into gaming, or vice versa. In his mind, games have very specific goals. From the article: "'Games have a function,' he said. 'It's a physical function. The character has to go from here to there, has to shoot that, has to drive this, has to knock that down, has to jump up here. ... That's how a game works. So cooking dinner, going to Lamaze class, there's no way to figure that into a game at this point. Maybe somebody else can do it and maybe somebody will, but that wasn't really what this game was about. It was supposed to be a story about a kid who wants to be a gangster -- a punk who wants to be a gangster -- and so that's what we did.'"
He may be a smart man, but he's a damned fool.
I mean, he's right; games can't provide the same narrative as TV or films, but then again, films and TV are also distinct in narrative, so it hardly matters because they're supposed to be different.
I mean, why'd he use cooking and lamaze class as examples? Are they somehow more significant than other mundane events, like brushing your teeth, or taking a shit? There we go! In order to be accepted by clueless, geriatric jackasses, Half-Life has to have a sequence where Gordon Freeman has to stop running from the Combine chasing him, find a secluded spot in the wilderness, and just squat, and he has to do it before the patrolling Strider nearby notices him and rains death upon him. To make it even more intense, he has to run around the woods looking for leaves to wipe his ass with!
In all seriousness though, it sounds like he has a narrow-minded perspective as to how games are. I mean, the fact that he hasn't even touched them since the NES days because he sucks at them speaks volumes.
Perhaps sometime in the near future, someone will make a game so good and rich in narrative that EVERYBODY will just stop watching television and movies altogether, exchanging their satellite receivers and DVD players to get a Wii or an Xbox 360. Meanwhile, this guy will be looking desperately for a job, or maybe he'll just say "Fuck it." and retire. Who knows?